Exodus: The Orion War Read online

  Exodus

  Volume II

  The Orion War

  by

  Kali Altsoba

  ©

  Kali Altsoba

  (2017)

  About the Author

  Kali Altsoba is the pen name used in future war fiction by a military historian who teaches at a major research university in the United States. He has published award-winning books on world military history and 20th century military history

  Contents

  Toruń

  Constance

  Contact

  Crater

  Parade

  Ulysses

  Troopships

  Partings

  Regret

  Alpha

  Beta

  Gravel

  Émile

  Vacuum

  Jump

  “If some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep, even so I will endure. For already have I suffered full much, and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.

  Let this be added to the tale of those.”

  Homer

  The Odyssey

  Toruń

  The RIK landed on Genève 75 days ago, falling from the sky in waves of armtrak loaders and heavy troop carriers, protected by swarms of skycraft. Now the flames of war lick at the outer defenses of Toruń, the place off-world tourists call the “Golden City of Wood.”

  It’s a quiet place for a large city, surrounded by vast and ancient forests. It’s known to its more humble inhabitants simply as “Arbor City.” Today, it’s the last place of resistance on Genève, its garrison holding out around the great berm that surrounds the forest sanctuary.

  Everyone is waiting on the last, surging RIK assault on the berm. Waiting for the city to fall. Worse, waiting for catastrophic bombardment by fire that must raze Toruń to ashen ruins, as the enemy has already razed the great forests of Northland to blackened stubs all around.

  Toruń lies a thousand klics inside its namesake woods. With access to abundant forest on Genève all towers are wooden, all its streets are laid down with beams of supercompressed timber. But none were hewn in the northern forests. All building wood was brought north from permit cutting areas far beyond the old growth preserves, from Southland’s vast tree farms.

  There’s a trade-off for cheap, renewable material. The structural height limit for wood buildings is 30 stories. So no great towers rise here like they do in the Calmari capital city of Lowestoft-on-Stamos, on Caspia. No ultrasteel and superconcrete monsters that literally scrape the top of the sky. The pay-off on Genève is an entire city of wood with golden streets and gold and silver hues in every structure within. And always and everywhere the rich smell of the deep forest, even under the urban bustle of Genève’s spaceport and only large city.

  Two lakes inside the walls, an ever-wet northern climate to refill them, and vigilant and dutiful citizens ensure that Toruń has the water and the will to fight any fire that might break out. But the real city defense is not water and hoses or even its people. It’s supercompressed wood that can hardly burn, and retardant microcoating. The fire tek and system has worked for almost ten centuries, ensuring that a building might burn a rare time or two, but Toruń will not. At least not by accident. What the grim invader will do when he arrives is a different question.

  To protect from wild forest fires a great fire-break has circled Toruń down all those same centuries. A wide, treeless perimeter and moat meets a final defense in a high earthen wall 100 meters tall and 300 meters thick, covered base-to-rampart by superhydrophobic concrete of immense compressive and armored strength. The berm wall sharply defined and limited city growth, but Toruń’s tightknit community always liked it that way. Toruń hasn’t expanded upward or outward in the last 400 years. It may be the most contented place in all the Thousand Worlds of Orion. Or it was.

  Already Toruń is shrouded in smoke and coated in ash. But not all of it came from fires set by the RIK. When enemy landers first fell on Southland, even before the RIK made the fast jump across open water to gain a toehold on the northern continent then break its Main Defense Line, General Amiya Constance did not wait for fire and war to burn a wicked path to Toruń.

  “Reinforce fire retardant on all towers, Firechief. I want roof sprayers and tanks as well as anti-skycraft guns on every rooftop. And soak all alleys and sidewalks with flameout, too.”

  “Soak, sir?”

  “Triple the annual spray. Wait, belay that order. Use it all.”

  “All? Every ton of reserve?”

  “Yes, chief. I want to wade in fire retardant. Hold nothing back. There’s no point now.”

  “Yes general. I understand: soak Toruń until out people protest that they need waders.”

  “Exactly so, chief. But first send your crews and all your heavy equipment to the Berm Gate tomorrow morning. At first light. Everyone and everything that you can spare.”

  “May I ask why, general? Shouldn’t we disperse them across the city and start soaking the streets and tower canyons as you want?”

  “Not yet. First, we’re going to start a fire.”

  “What?”

  “Around the berm. I want you to burn the forest back at least another klic. We don’t want to leave untreated wood so close for the enemy to use when he gets here, either for fuel or to build his siege huts and redoubts. And he will get here. When he does, I want clean fields-of-fire for wall gunners and berm defenders. We can’t hit what we can’t see. His field camo is at least as good as ours. Let’s not allow our beloved old woods to give him any additional help.”

  “Yes general. Of course. A controlled burn, all around the city. Hmmm...”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s quite a fire you want, general.”

  “Then you better hop to it chief. The clock is running.”

  The interior city is quartered by smaller earthen walls, living growth on top and strong roots holding the soil in place. All Toruń smells of woody attars, moss, grass, sweet saps and musty woodland. Streets and short towers glow gold at night as amber lights reflect off deep-grained ligneous streets and varnished buildings. “Golden City of Wood” isn’t just a touristy slogan or illusion. It’s the abiding visual reality and one of the deepest prides of all Genèvens.

  A solitary road arrives hesitantly from the southeast. It’s allowed to cross the outer moat, thence cut straight through the berm via a sternly guarded Gate. Four other forest roads form a semi-circular route outside the city wall until they meet the first, joining just before the spot where the only moat bridge crosses under the berm as a single passage. The system is neat, well-scaled, orderly and regular. Just like all prewar Genève. And its sturdy and proud freefolk.

  Then war came and a tsunami of woeful refugees threatened to overflow the moat and berm as the defenders of the MDL gave way. The main body of KRA broke apart all along the coast, then tried but failed to reform at an improvised inner defense line. The remnants ran in broken bits to the edge of the forest zone, a lucky few managing to squeeze inside. Millions more civilians crowded along the forest roads, all leading to the Berm Gate and quiet Toruń.

  The five rivers of refugees kept flowing until Toruń’s population was swollen to three times its prewar size, with half again that number crowded outside the berm desperate to get in.

  So many fleeing soldiers and civilians asked for passage into the city that residents and local officials who at first welcomed and aided their country kinfolk panicked shamefully. It happened all at once, when a crowd gathered before Governance Hall demanding that Toruń be sealed. The prewar mayor stood up before the sullen mob milling in the city’s main square.

  “Toruń is old and conservative but also modern and cosmopolitan. It ha
s always been a haven for many of Orion’s odder artists and writers, poets and teachers, with room as well for off-world Krevans and friendlies. It’s full of natural wonders and naturally wonderful people.”

  He’s never been at war before, so he still sounds like a peacetime politician. Then he slips in a line about two Grün luxury liners that everyone knows were trapped at Toruń by the war and forced to ground. “And a haven even for a few unfriendly farfolk.”

  “Booo! Booo! There’s no place here for Grünen! Expel all farfolk!”

  He deflects blame. “To where? Into the forest? I would like nothing better than to kick out all those stranded here from the tourist liners, but General Constance says they would pose more danger to us wandering in the woods as a potential fifth column than here in our city.”

  “Booo! Hissssss! It’s our city, ours. Not theirs. Not hers, either!”

  “That issue is closed, for now. By order of the garrison commander.”

  “Shame, shame!”

  “It may be. But let me say this. Your city government still has some say over refugees. Toruńites always lived side by side in civic peace. Now a medieval siege is coming. Barbarians will be on the hills and in our woods, lobbing rockets, mortars and plasma over the berm. We have room in our hearts for our own refugees but no more room in our streets or our homes.”

  “Huzzah!” That’s more like it. They cheer him now, knowing that he will cave to cheers faster than to their to their threats. He’s a hollow man, too easily filled with frothy nothings.

  “As your mayor, I order the Berm Gate closed. It’s now barred to any more refugees.”

  “Huzzah, huzzah!”

  “I do this because our beloved wooden city has reached full capacity.”

  They smell his weakness. They want more.

  “You’re wrong! We’re overstuffed already!”

  “Kick them out! Kick them out!”

  “You should’ve closed the Gate a week ago, two weeks ago!”

  “I shall close it now. And I’ll triple the guard.”

  “You lie! You’re not the garrison commander.”

  “I’ll use Toruń police.”

  “Huzzah!”

  “I will stand guard myself, if I have to!”

  “Vive! Vive le maire!”

  He still can’t let go of his prewar persona, or of politics. He has no idea how much Toruń and Genève have changed. How much change is coming to all the Thousand Worlds.

  “Yet, let me say this. I’m closing the Gate today so that no more refugees enter Toruń. But we must never forget the kind, generous folk that we Toruńites are and will forever be.”

  He says it to a mob already forgetting who they were. Satisfied with its easy victory, the mob turns back into a crowd, then breaks up into little clots of family or friends and disperses into the city. It has cheered him for giving up so quickly on what it wants, and now it starts to trickle home or back to work. It will reform and return tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. Always demanding more of him. For the mob has seen how easily this callow mayor gives in.

  On the refugees come, barred from entry or not. They arrive at the berm from all over Northland. A horde of gray ghosts gathers outside the city, hundreds of thousands, filling the wider firebreak General Constance made. They crowd against the berm, spill onto the bridge to press against and plead with young and embarrassed Gate guards, in it way over their heads.

  “Please officer, a little water? I’ve not drunk in three days and my mouth is full of ash.”

  “Here, take my canteen.”

  “I need water too!”

  “That was my last. Sorry.”

  “Mercy, a little mercy for my old mother, mister police. Won’t you let her in?”

  “I can’t. I have my orders from...”

  “What kind of orders are those, to keep your own people out?”

  “Please, I must get to Toruń market to buy juhtúró for my baby.”

  It’s a traditional quark dish made from ewe's milk. The guard the young mother speaks to gives it to her own kids. She gave a wood bowl of it just this morning to her littlest one, who drank it greedily and asked for more.

  “Sergeant, can we let this mother in? Just this one?”

  “No. Stand your post. And stop talking to the refugees.”

  “What’s going on here officers?”

  “Nothing captain. It’s all under control.”

  “Captain, are you a police captain? You can let us in!”

  “Stand back! We have orders from the mayor.”

  “He’s not our mayor!”

  “Sergeant, no one gets past this line for any reason.”

  “Yes captain. Officers, do your jobs. Move these people back.”

  “You, yes you, mother. You must turn away. Go back.”

  “Go back where? There is no other place on all Genève.”

  “Go now!”

  Low flying Jabos stay away for awhile, distracted by Brusilov’s search for Madjenik in the southern forests. They’re far more discouraged from direct attacks on the city by Toruń’s bristle brush of anti-skycraft cannon, mounted on every tower roof and all along the berm wall. There is no angle of air attack that doesn’t lead RIK skycraft into rising sheets of lethal energy.

  The guns fire curtain walls of light orange and green plasma, looking like borealis over the city even in daytime. The sheets shudder into sky frames, pressing to bring Jabos crashing down to burn out as ploughing gouges in the ground and trees of Toruń Woods. More bombers are lost to starstreak high-velocity missiles that leap like mountain cats from the rooves of the tallest buildings, to claw surprised enemy pilots from the sky. Jabo pilots hate starstreaks.

  “We have no missile like it, major general, sir.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “RIK liaison for skycraft support, sir.”

  “Tell me again what the problem is?”

  “Our Jabos and even the higher-flying Raptors are vulnerable to their ground-to-air missiles, shōshō. Much more vulnerable than anticipated.”

  “Why? We’re the Grün Imperium. How can it be that they have better weapons?”

  “Just this one, sir. Well, I have to say their infantry’s field camo is pretty good, too. We’ve had a helluva time picking off their strays, ever since we broke their line.”

  “I know. I’m scouring this fucking forest with my own infantry, looking for bandits under every bush and fucking tree root.”

  “Back to the Jabos, sir. RSU has completed its analysis, shōshō. They say we haven’t prepared proper skycraft because prewar we were too focused only on offensive operations.”

  “What? What kind of excuse is that?”

  “Not an excuse, sir. Just an explanation. Rikugun weps designers were not told to make ready for this kind of long war at all, expecting nothing but swift victory. Never a city siege.”

  “Then we should have the firepower to blast through that godsdamn berm wall.”

  “Well sir, it looks like not thinking about defense affected the way they thought about offensive design, too. Especially with our Jabos.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We maximized punching over counter-punching, firepower over armor. Our skycraft are all attack and almost no defense. One hit, even a glancing laser or plasma pulse, and they come down. So we’ve had to pull way back on bombing the berm wall, as you know.”

  “Well that’s too bad for them. The designers. I want the name of the man in charge, of the Jabos especially. We’re losing them by the hundreds. I want his head delivered to Pyotr.”

  “Umm, it’s been done already, shōshō.”

  “When?”

  “Last week. I sent a squad personally to Daegu to pick him up. They crated the head, hmmm, he was bald by the way, and shipped it to Pyotr in the Waldstätte Palast on Kestino.”

  “Was my name attached to the gift?”

  “Of course, general. We knew you would want that.”

 
“Well done. What’s your name? I want you on my headquarters staff. You’re a man who knows how to fight this fucking war.”

  RIK has no counter to the city’s sheet plasma and streaker missile defenses. Its skycraft take heavy losses. It grounds them. But everyone on the berm wall and in the city knows that the hated dive bombers will be back. Hundreds, if not thousands, of them.

  Kaigun ships in orbit are called in next, to do a favor for the Rikugun. They’re happy to comply, to show up the more junior and rival service. Their cruisers and Zerstörers fare little better than RIK skycraft. Great plasma tubes with “bowels full of wrath and ready mounted,” spit indignation upward, above the blue Genèven sky into the first whispers of orbital space.